


All's Fair...

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeryn learns human female wiles... with difficulty!</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Fair...

Set during Terra Firma and in between WSS3 and BT

Disclaimer: characters are not mine, as always they belong to the Jim Henson Company! 

Warning: Pretty much a pile of...fluff!

Word count: 3335

My thanks to A Damned Scientist again for his comments, insights and suggestions…and for always being willing to beta! 

All’s Fair... (PG-13)

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Chiana and Aeryn were relaxing in the sitting room of the villa where the aliens had been housed while on their visit to Earth. A DVD was playing on the television and a large bowl of popcorn sat on the floor between them. Chiana sat cross-legged on the floor, back to the couch, while Aeryn had snuggled up in one corner of it, legs folded under herself. Every so often one or the other could be heard snort in disbelieving amusement at the story unfolding on the screen in front of them. 

After a particularly ludicrous scene, Chiana finally broke the silence:

“Could the males of this species possibly be THAT stupid?”

“I don’t know, Chi, I find it hard to comprehend...but if you were to believe this movie, it would seem they are! I must admit though the man playing the Tom Brookman character…”Aeryn picked up the DVD cover and carefully perused the names of the actors until she found the one she was looking for “… Cameron Mitchell, is sort of attractive, I certainly would not say no to him if I was in that brunette’s place!”

At that moment, their dismal assessment of human males’ behaviour and general commentary on the movie was interrupted by Olivia, who, loaded with grocery bags, entered the sitting room, smiled at them and made her way to the kitchen, cheerfully calling over her shoulder:

“Hi girls! I am here to drop off some groceries. I thought you might be getting bored with the food the government’s providing so I brought some of John’s favourites for you to enjoy. How y’all doing?”

Aeryn raised her voice so that she could be heard all the way into the adjacent room and replied:

“Good, Olivia, thank you. Do you need help?”

“No, it’s alright…thanks! It’s only a few bits and pieces, mainly sweet things. Rygel seems to love them and to be going through them at the speed of light!”

“That sound like Rygel alright!” Aeryn concurred.

Chiana, who, on Olivia’s arrival, had quickly pressed the pause button on the DVD remote control, piped up:

“Liv, when you are done there, would you come in and sit with us to watch the end of this movie? I…I have questions I want to ask you!”

“Yeah, sure. My afternoon is free and I was hoping to hang out with you girls since the guys are away.” They heard her potter around for another little while, opening and closing cupboard doors while tidying away the food until finally she walked in, took her shoes off and mirrored Aeryn’s position at the other end of the couch.

“So, what are we watching?” she asked trying to eye the title of the movie on the discarded DVD cover now lying on the floor in front of Aeryn.

Chiana picked it up and applying her newly acquired knowledge of written English, slowly read the title out loud: “‘How...To… Marry…A… Millionaire… “

Olivia replied with a smile: “That’s a fun movie, a classic! I bet John brought it over. He has the entire Marilyn Monroe movie collection, you know? And can you blame him? Most guys would kill for a woman like her…”

“Which one of the threeis she?” Chiana asked, interested in finding out more about what the males of this planet considered appealing in a female.

“Oh, let me show you…” Olivia gently picked the remote control out of Chiana’s hand and started the movie again. The images played on for a short time before she hit the pause button again and pointed: “That one! That’s Marilyn Monroe!”

“And…and you say most human males would find her attractive? Why is that? What do they see in her?” Chiana asked somewhat puzzled, eliciting a laugh from Olivia.

Aeryn had kept quiet through the exchange between the other two women, but a small amount of tension in her body, which most people would not have noticed unless they had looked hard or had known her really well, showed that her feigned disinterest hid quite a large amount of attention and curiosity. 

“Well, she is…she is gorgeous!” Olivia explained “She is buxom, curvaceous …”

“…Blonde,” Aeryn muttered under her breath.

Chiana and Olivia exchanged a quick look at this interjection, both their minds instantly conjuring up Caroline’s hair colour.

“…and, yes, blonde. “ Olivia continued. “But there is more to her than just her looks. She was…she IS the epitome of what every man loves the most. She is sexy but also somewhat innocently wide-eyed and needy. She just has a way about her…how can I explain it? She makes men want to protect her, spoil her and coddle her as well as…other things!” Olivia winked, her meaning as clear as daylight.

“ But…but why would your men want to go through life with a weak, soft, inferior mate like that at their side? I can see how she could be appealing for a quick frell but as a mate she would be useless!” Chiana expressed in words what Aeryn had been thinking all along but had been unwilling to vocalise.

Olivia shrugged: “I think it’s written in their DNA. Men like to feel stronger, more intelligent…to feel like they are the providers and the carers. It’s just the way it is. Not ALL males are like that, some are a little more…enlightened for want of a better word. But it would be safe to say that most of them feel that way. And some women know exactly how to appeal to that side of their nature and take advantage of it. Hey, by all means I am not an expert on relationships…but I know a lot of women play on it and it works…” 

“You mean your women trick the men by…by…acting and pretending to be like…like her?” Chiana waved her hand in the vague direction of the TV screen still paused on an image of the blonde bombshell.

Olivia nodded, then after a short silence she added: “You know, we have a saying…all’s fair in love and war!”

Aeryn’s ears pricked up at the mention of war. “You mean…these…these strategies employed by your women help them win over the men in the same way an effective weapon, if deployed right, can win a battle?” She could not resist asking for clarification. 

Olivia’s eye sparkled with mischief before she confirmed: “Yeah, I guess so. It may not sound fair but effective tactics are good tactics and if they work…why not use them?” She philosophically concluded while shrugging her shoulders.

Aeryn didn’t say any more on the subject but Olivia’s words kept playing over and over again in her mind for a good while after that.  
________________________________________

Five days later, Aeryn was standing in the kitchen trying to decide whether she felt hungry enough to bother making a sandwich, when she heard the front door open and John’s voice call out:

“Hey, D, my man, I’m here! Are you ready to go?” When no answer came, John raised his voice and loudly called out again.

“Yo! D! Where are you?”

Aeryn heard him go up the stairs towards the bedrooms by the sounds of things taking the steps two at a time and still hollering for D’Argo. Then she heard him make his way more slowly back down again after obviously failing to find the Luxanupstairs.

As she had been in two minds about food, she now was in two minds as to whether step out and meet John head on in the hall or stay where she was, keep quiet and hope that he would leave without extending his search to other areas of the house. 

She hadn’t seen him in over a weeken. 

She ached to talk to him but at the same time dreaded seeing the uncomfortable body language he now regularly displayed when in her presence and how rejected and miserable it made her feel. 

The decision was taken out of her hands when John charged into the kitchen intent on checking out whether D’Argo might be out back in the garden.

Concentrating as he was in the search for his friend, it took his eyes a second to register and recognise the figure standing stock still in the middle of the room. Her hair was down around her shoulders, she was wearing a light tank top barely covering her belly-button and a pair of loose linen trousers riding low on her hips. Damn, she looked like a million bucks! 

He stopped dead in his tracks just past the threshold and his hands, that just a moment before had been relaxed at his sides, balledup into fists. He quickly shoved them into his jeans pockets, immediately and unconsciously assuming a closed off, slightly hunched over defensive posture.

“D’Argo left about half an arn ago with his bodyguards. He said he would meet you at the IASA test centre.” Aeryn stiffly informed him, upset as always at his tensing up when seeing her and at his intentional avoidance of her eyes - her uncertainly at what to do with herself painfully mirroring his own.

“Oh, okay! I guess there was some sort of snafu in communication…I will head over there now…thanks!” John said and quickly made to turn and walk away.

Feeling pathetic and a little disgusted at herself for wanting to extend this stolen rare moment alone with him, Aeryn desperately looked around the kitchen for something – anything - that would give her an excuse to delay his departure. Olivia’s words about men and their inability to resist a helpless female flashed through her mind. She wanted so desperately for John to stop and give her some attention the way he had used to for the first three cycles of their life on Moya that she was prepared to try anything. Although the ‘helpless female’ act was truly not her style, she had been raised a warrior and a soldier and if a dirty, unfamiliar, uncomfortable fight was what it took, she would step up and fight it.

Her eyes fell on an unopened jar of pickles sitting on the counter. She quickly reached for it and called him back:

“John?”

“Yeah?” He stopped and answered but stubbornly refused to turn back and look at her.

“Mmm could you help me with this before you go?”

The vagueness of the request forced him to retrace his steps and look back towards her to see what she was referring to. Still making sure to avoid her eyes, he locked his own on the jar she now held extended in his direction.

He stared at it for a prolonged moment and then, finally, he slowly looked up directly at her for the first time that day, a frown creasing his forehead in incomprehension.

“Help you with what exactly?”

“I…I don’t seem to be able…to be strong enough to…to open it…maybe you’ll be able to…to…you know!” Now feeling totally idiotic for the stammering delivery, stupid for coming up with such a feeble, preposterous excuse and nervous about the unfamiliar ground she was treading on, Aeryn took three firm strides towards him, shoved the jar at his chest a lot more forcefully than she had intended and hit him right in the solar plexus with it.

John grunted and jerked forward in both surprise and pain. 

Aeryn winced internally at her clumsy lack of grace. ‘Just like that blonde woman in the movie, Aeryn, way to go!’ she thought caustically, mocking herself, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.

John, finally, slowly pulled his fists out of his pockets, tried to sooth the injured part by rubbing the top of his stomach with one hand and took the jar from her with the other. He firmly set his focus on making damn sure not to brush her knuckles with his fingers and, having accomplished that, he once again looked up at her briefly with a perplexed look before proceeding to do as asked. 

The lid popped open with a hiss at his first, gentle twist.

‘Frell!’Aeryn thought.

Still frowning, John handed the now open jar back to her and shrugged: “I guess you had already loosened it…” Then, after the smallest of hesitations, he walked away but not before casting a furtive, bewildered and confused side-long glance at her.  
________________________________________

“Wait, wait, wait!” John propped himself up on one elbow twisting his body sideways towards Aeryn, who was lying back against the pillows looking up at Moya’s ribbed ceiling and intentionally not looking at his face. “Hold your horses! You mean that…that thing that happened in the kitchen with the jar was your attempt at seduction Marilyn Monroe style?!” John asked, a gurgling belly-laugh escaping his throat in incredulous mirth.

Once back on Moya, after clearing the air about their feelings, after the horrific experience of her capture and torture at the hands of the Scarrans and her breakneck rescue, they finally had been able to do what both had wanted for so long: to openly be together, share a bed, quarters, their entire lives. In a truly astounding and cathartic 360 degree change of direction, John had insisted that the only way they could really put the last cycle of hurt and heartbreak behind them was to hash out and share the myriad of feelings and experiences they had kept from each other. Talk. The Human wanted to talk and he wanted his woman to do likewise.

So, they had gotten into the habit of doing just that. After eagerly and enthusiastically sharing their bodies, every night one of them, in turn, would reveal to the other one episode or state of mind they had lived through, something about each other they had kept to themselves while leading their painful separate lives.

Tonight had been Aeryn’s turn and, although reluctantly, she had chosen to tell him about that time back on Earth - about the movie, Olivia’s explanations and about her own ineptattempt at catching his attention.

A little miffed at his laugh and disbelieving, gentle mocking, Aeryn nodded just once to confirm his suspicions.

“Oh man! You almost knocked me out with that jar, babe! I guess that would have been another way to go about making me stay!” John guffawed then tried to mitigate the sting of his words and hilarity by softly but lingeringly planting a kiss on the tip of her nose.

“Glad to be of amusement to you, John!” Aeryn huffilysaid, the kiss proving not to be too effective a balm on her bruised feelings.

“Come on, honey! Don’t be like that! I’m sure you can see how it’s kinda…sorta funny!” He searched for one of her hands, prised it away from her flat, bare belly where it was resting and brought it up to his lips kissing the back of it before adding: “And you know what? I have finally found *your* Achilles’ heel! I really thought there was nothing you didn’t do well…I stand corrected!” He knew all too well he was treading on extremely dangerous ground, but try as he might he could not stop another chuckle from escaping his throat.

“Fine! “Aeryn withdrew her hand from his mouth, grabbed the covers from where they were lying at the bottom of the bed and pulled them up to protect herself against the night chill. “Can we go asleep now, John?”

“Yeah, sure, honey.” He let himself drop flat on his back beside her and wisely decided not to point out that she seemed to be hogging most of the blankets on purpose as some sort of punishment for his reaction to her story. He knew a little cold wouldn’t kill him, but pushing the subject with her any further just might!

After dimming the lights to almost darkness, he turned on his side, adjusted his body to optimum sleeping position and with an amused smile still slightly creasing his lips and dancing in his voice, he said: “Good night, Aer, sleep well. Love you!” 

What he got in reply from her could be only described as half a grunt.

Apart from Moya’s gentle, soothing breathing murmurs, silence enveloped their quarters. After a few hundred microts John was on the verge of drifting into deep sleep when a loud, sharp scream from Aeryn jolted him awake again.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch! It frelling hurts!”

“Aeryn? What? Aeryn? What’s going on?” John asked a touch frantically, his brain disoriented by the semi-darkness and still addled by pre-sleep relaxation. At Aeryn’s cry of pain, he had sat bolt upright and instinctively reached for Winona’s reassuring grip. Only when his hand had found his naked thigh instead of the pistol, he had finally remembered where he was and that Winona was lying with his clothes on a nearby chair.

Now fully alert, he turned towards her and again asked, worried and unsure as what to do:“What’s wrong, babe? Answer me, please! Aeryn?”

“My calf! A really bad cramp in my right calf! Aaarrg! John, please help!” She pleaded, her voice quavering with ill-concealed pain, her right leg coming jerkily up to bend at the knee. 

No sooner had the words left her lips than John had already scooted down to the foot of their bed, pulled the covers off of her, positioned his knees on either side of her right leg and pulled it straight down making a soothing, shushing sound to calm her down.

“You need to stretch the leg, Aer!” He said “…Yeah, just like that! Cramps hurt like a bitch, I know, but, I promise, the pain will be over soon…” He wrapped both of his hands around her lower right leg and gently started massaging the taut muscle below the silky soft skin of her calf. “How does that feel, honey? Any better?”

“Yes…yes, a little better, John. Thanks! But don’t stop yet…” In the semi-darkness he could just make out her outline and expression: she was propped up on both of her elbows and was looking down at him, a slight wince of pain still marring her features. 

“No, of course I won’t!” he cooed while continuing the light massage. Smiling up at her, he then added: “Maybe, next time, we should avoid that odd, twisted position we tried tonight and go for more traditional, less convoluted ones…you know…to avoid cramps and other injuries!” 

“Yeah, well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, John, isn’t it? But it’s not much good to me now!” She protested.

“You are right…I’m sorry, baby!” John brought his attention back to the task at hand and before long, exactly as Aeryn knew he would, he lowered his head and let his lips follow in the trail of his hands…along her calf, to the sensitive hollow at the back of her knee and slowly upwards to the inside of her smooth, silky, milky-white thigh…

Aeryn had to admit she felt a little guilty. Her claim of a fake cramp had been sly. On this occasion though she was pretty sure it was going to result in a happy ending for both of them, so she firmly refused to feel too bad about having fooled him into doing what he was doing with such dedication.

In two nights’ time, when it was her turn for revelations again, she might come clean and tell him the truth about it.

After all, sooner or later he would have to learn a very important lesson: her Peacekeeper training and up-bringing would not let her accept failure. Some war tactics might take longer for her to perfect, but perfect them she eventually would!

With a little satisfied smile on her lips, Aeryn laid back, crossed her arms behind her head and let him get on with his skilful and delicious ministrations.

The End


End file.
